A Day in the Life (in ten paragraphs or less)

The past few days I have been tooling around town doing the kinds of things I might have done if I were home in New York. Yesterday, I tried to motivate myself to do something enriching -- i.e., go to an art museum -- but I ended up skipping it for now and taking a nap. (That basically summarizes my entire NY cultural experience in a nutshell.)

One of the things that I did manage was go to a couple spinning classes at a local gym. Spinning here is, in theory, just like in the US -- a bunch of people sit in a room of stationery bikes and change their pace, position, etc. according to the music. The first day I went was an experience in humility. This class ended up being kind of like a party, though, just with a lot more sweating.
The instructor spoke in a streaming mumble of Spanish the entire time, with his mouth really close to the microphone, thus further obscuring his mumble. I didn't understand a word, which the instructor figured out before class when I asked him (in poor Spanish) where to buy water. My so-called back-up plan to just watch what everyone else was doing fell through because no one was doing the same thing. Everyone was riding a bike, but some people were standing, others were sitting. The guy sitting next to me was translating what to do, but his translations were a bit cryptic. ("Three minutes -- you go!" Go where? These are stationery bikes.) Meanwhile, the instructor was cruising around the classroom chatting with people. At one point, I know he gave me a shout out during the continuous mumble, but I have nary a clue about what he actually said. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed the class and promised the instructor I'd come back tonight.

I also went to see a movie, Disturbia (called Paranoia in Argentina). Nothing too unusual about the movie theater. It's assigned seating like it is in Europe. Oh, and it's cheap. I think I paid about $3.50 for my ticket. The one thing that cracked me up was the concession stand. I ordered popcorn and a drink, and the woman tried to upsell me just like they do in the US. For cincuento centavas mas, you can get the larger drink.

The movie was in English with Spanish subtitles, so I continued my learning experience. At least during the parts when my eyes weren't closed. It was crazy scary. When I came home that night, I was up until 5 in the morning because I was convinced one of the neighbors was a serial killer. I mean, with the screaming kids and the unnaturally loud waterfall, it all makes sense. (5 in the morning, by the way, is why I ended up skipping the museum yesterday.)

One good thing about the Argentine lifestyle is that people like to stay out late, and up late. So, for example, if you go to an 8:30 pm class at the gym, there's still time to meet for dinner afterwards. Or, if you stay up until 5 am scared to check out the noise in your bedroom for fear it's the psychopath neighbor poised to bludgeon you with a potato masher (you having hidden all the knives in the apartamento in case this very scenario happened to occur), there's good tv on to keep you occupied.

So, I watched this awesome BBC documentary about Kurt Cobain. Basically the only people who would agree to talk to the filmmaker were a bunch of random and peripheral nutburgers whose only connection seemed to be that they had allegedly taken drugs with Cobain and Courtney Love. Oh, that and the crazy executioner guy that Courtney Love allegedly tried to hire to kill Cobain for $50,000. Seriously, the guy was straight from central casting, with a big beer belly, no shirt, and a black, leather executioner's mask. I think deep down he's probably a really lovable teddy bear of a guy who is misunderstood because of the mask...oh, and the song he sang about killing whores.

One interesting thing I learned: according to Kurt's high school girlfriend, Kurt weighed about 120 pounds, and was really self-conscious about it. He would layer on two pairs of long underwear, jeans, a shirt, sweatshirt, flannel, coat, etc just to appear bulkier. So basically, me and my friends spent our college years in unattractive grunge-esque attire, wearing ugly flannel plaid shirts and ill fitting men's jeans, all because Kurt Cobain was self-conscious about his skinniness.

By the end of the documentary, I had gotten over my fear about my psychopathic neighbor, and had moved on to being scared that Courtney Love would come to Argentina and kill me. Bitch is crazy. I'm taking a big risk even posting this. But I do it all for you guys...